Pineapple Upside Down (Cup)Cakes

This week's chef is Duff Goldman, The Ace of Cakes guy. In honor of his awesome cakes, the assignment this week was to make and decorate a cake. I may be good at a lot of things, but cake decorating isn't included in that list. I almost skipped this week, but then I decided I'd cheat and make something that was pretty on its own- Pineapple Upside Down (Cup)Cake! I browsed around online for a good recipe and came to the conclusion that they all made way more than I wanted or used boxed cake mix. I finally stumbled over Coconut & Lime's recipe and decided it had to be the one!

I used vanilla sugar instead of liquid vanilla and sugar since I figured it would probably achieve the same result. Maybe more vanillaey, but good. I also used maraschino cherries for a punch of color. My cupcake pans seem to be a little more shallow than US ones, so I got 12 cupcakes instead of the 10 that the recipe says. I also needed to get a little creative in getting the pineapple rings to fit. The recipe suggests cutting out a wedge, but that still didn't give me enough room to use my cherries so I cut the rings in half and then sliced part of the inner circle out.

I don't have a verdict yet, the guinea pigs are Martijn's dinner group tonight. I did sample the corner of one though and it wasn't too shabby. I'll update the post later once the guys taste them!